For over 100 years the Arctic has
been studied for potential natural resources.
Aboriginal Peoples living in the Arctic near the
Mackenzie River used hydrocarbons to seal up seams
on canoes. As Europeans moved into the Arctic, they
were shown by the Aboriginal Peoples the oil seeps.
Records from trading posts mention an active trade
in tar: Rond Lake near Fort Good Hope was noted as a
major source of tar. R.G. McConnell of the
Geological Survey wrote in 1889:

The Devonian rocks are nearly
everywhere more or less petroliferous and over large
areas afford promising indications of the presence
of oil in workable quantities…The possible oil
country along the Mackenzie valley is thus seen to
be almost co-extensive with that of the valley
itself. Its remoteness from the present centres of
population and its situation north of the still
un-worked Athabasca and Peace River oil field will
probably delay its development for some years to
come, but this is only a question of time.

From this starting point, the
discovery of oil and gas in the Arctic has been
difficult and rewarding at the same time. Many
projects were initiated, such as the CANOL project
in the 1940’s. From Leduc up to Zama in northwestern
Alberta, exploration of the Artic continued,
including the 1954 mapping of surface structures by
J.C. Sproule and Associates. The data indicated that
gas could be present. Test hole drilling and the
drilling of Briggs Rabbit Lake No. 1 confirmed that
there was natural gas there. Subsequently, Shell
Canada Limited drilled four holes in the Alexandra
wells area, with Imperial Oil, Amerada,
Scurry-Rainbow, Amoco, and others conducting seismic
analysis of the area.

All these efforts resulted in no
major finds. The companies searching for oil refused
to give up, and continued to build on their
knowledge of the area’s geology. The emphasis was
now to move even further north in search of unknown
resources. Areas such as the Cameron Hills and the
Liard Plateau were believed to hold deposits of oil
and gas. In anticipation, roughly 350 wells were
drilled south of the Arctic Circle during the 1950s
and 1960s. The first Arctic Island well was drilled
in 1961-62 by Dome Petroleum on Melville Island.
Other wells followed on Cornwallis and Bathurst
Islands. Although wells were abandoned, Melville
Island was the site of further significant gas
discoveries. Panarctic Petroleum, made up of
industry and government initiatives, found gas at
Drake Point on Melville Island in 1969.

Momentum continued with the
Mackenzie Delta, including Tuktoyaktuk peninsula and
Parson’s Lake wells yielding large gas reserves.
Drilling continued in the Arctic onshore and
offshore on artificial islands made from ice. An oil
discovery was also made at Bent Horn at Cameron
Island. However, with the new push to the farthest
reaches of the Arctic issues that had been ignored
were now surfacing. Concerns such as Aboriginal land
claims, social and environmental impacts needed to
be addressed by the government of Canada and
industry. The Thomas Berger Inquiry of 1977,
Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: The Report of
the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, recommended a
ten year moratorium on the construction of a huge
pipeline in the Mackenzie Delta demonstrating that
these issues were important to the overall
development of the Arctic.

This did not halt all production
and, in fact, one of the biggest developments of the
eighties took place at Norman Wells. Imperial Oil
began to develop more of the area that they acquired
in the 1920s and built a pipeline that connected
Norman Wells to Zama, Alberta. The Aboriginal
Peoples were now being involved and initiating
industry development. Land clam settlements during
the 1990s with the Gwich’in (southern Mackenzie
Delta) and the Sahtu (central Mackenzie Valley,
Colville Hills, Great Bear Lake Region) resulted in
the opening of many new sites previously disputed.

The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline has
been considered among the largest projects to go
forward in the north. The Aboriginal Pipeline Group
(APG) represented the interests of the Aboriginal
Peoples of the Northwest Territories and may acquire
up to a one-third interest in the Mackenzie Valley
Pipeline. The involvement of all groups in the
exploration of oil and gas was central to its
success. Since the first oil well was drilled in
1920, knowledge of the northern basin has increased
enormously. Geological information from drilling,
seismic, and surface mapping has led to the opening
of over 1900 oil and gas wells. Today, projects such
as the Mackenzie pipeline were the results of these
past initiatives by the many workers and oil
companies tapping into the Arctic’s resources.

This video clip gives an idea of what life was like in the artic for the workers, specifically during the CANOL project.
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